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How to Import Your Bitcoin Private Key

There are basically 2 ways that you can import your Bitcoin Private Key into the blockchain to redeem the Bitcoins within your Vircurvault Bitcoin Paper Wallet, or any other paper wallet for that matter. This guide will specifically note how customers using the Vircurvault Bitcoin Paper Wallet can redeem their Bitcoins, although anyone with a Bitcoin Paper Wallet should be able to use it to redeem their Bitcoins as well.

Please Note: Once you import your Private Key into either an Online Wallet or Software Wallet, you will want to destroy the Vircurvault Bitcoin Paper Wallet, or other paper wallet you were storing your Bitcoins on. The Paper Wallet's Private Key is no longer fully secure and is able to be compromised once uploaded to an Online Wallet service or to your Software Client such as the Bitcoin-QT client or Armory. It is recommended to spend the Bitcoins you need at this point, and transfer the rest to another Vircurvault Paper Wallet as soon as possible to ensure your Bitcoins are fully secured again. This way your Bitcoins are safe again from hackers and malicious software attacks on your Bitcoin wallet.

Online Wallet Guide

There are several trusted online wallet services that can be used to redeem Bitcoins from a paper wallet. In this guide, we will show you how easy it is to import your Paper Wallet's Private Key to Blockchain.info.

Enter your Private Key into the field provided under "Import Private Key" in bold.

Click the Blue "Add Private Key Button".

Alternatively, you can scan the QR Code provided on your Vircurvault Bitcoin Paper Wallet or other type of paper wallet with a webcam.

Profit.

You should soon see the balance transferred to your Blockchain.info Wallet once confirmations starting coming through the Blockchain. Congratulations, you have just imported your Paper Wallet's Private Key into your Online Bitcoin Wallet and into the Bitcoin Blockchain. Now you can spend your Bitoins, trade them on an exchange, or even invest them. Just remember, whatever you don't spend, make sure to deposit back into a secure, offline, Paper Wallet like a Vircurvault.

Software Wallet Guide

There also several trusted software wallets that can be used to import a Private Key from a Bitcoin Paper Wallet. In this guide, we will show you that it's not as easy on some as it is on others, but in any case it is a foolproof and very secure way to import your Bitcoin Paper Wallet Private Key into the blockchain to be able to spend the Bitcoins you have saved up on your Paper Wallet. Since we are all about securing your Bitcoins here, we will be showing you how to use the Bitcoin Armory client to import your Bitcoin private key. For those who don't have enough resources to run Armory, we will also be giving a quick lesson on how to manually import your a Private Key into your Bitcoin-QT client.

Armory Private Key Import

The Armory Bitcoin client is probably the easiest software client to import a Bitcoin Private Key into, but it also requires that you already have the Bitcoin-QT client installed too. That means that you are going to need a computer with about 1.5-2GB of RAM to be able to run the Armor client smoothly. If you don't have that much RAM, don't worry, we will be covering how to manually import a key into the Bitcoin QT client later.